I used to have young reporters who had never experienced an economic downturn tell me that the stockmarket always went up, and that we were crazy, as a nation, not to privatize Social Security by putting everything into the stock market.

Right.

I said I would roll over on my position and support privatization of Social Security, provided the reporter could first answer three simple questions about basic finance and financial history.

Did he or she want to play that game?

Every reporter said they did. Here were my questions:

What is a no-load fund?.

What is a zero coupon bond?.

Who is Robert Citron?

When every single reporter crashed and burned on those three questions (this was before Wikipedia), I would point out that this was normal.

"Across America, people who don't know the rules are pretty sure they can win the game. Las Vegas casinos get rich fanning that conceit"